Foods products, such as meat, cheese and the like, are conventionally packaged in plastic bags at workstations. Packaged foods products must carry product information such as packaging date and product source information. Product information is commonly printed on the bags.
Baggers or bag dispensers that supply printed bags to workstations are available. These devices include a drive that moves the bags from a supply of bags to the workstation. The bags pass a printer that prints product information on exposed sides of the bags before the bags reach the workstation.
Bags are supplied by the manufacturer as an indefinite-length bag assembly, either as a roll of bags or as a shingled bag assembly stored in a box. The bags are spaced along the length of the bag assembly. With shingled bag assemblies, lead ends of the bags are adhered to tape strips and trailing ends overlie each other. The tape strips are fed through the device from the box to the workstation. The bags are removed from the tape strips at the workstation.
Glatfelter, Jr. U.S. Pat. No. 6,837,023, assigned to the common assignee of this application, is incorporated herein by reference and discloses a bagger that is intended for high-production workstations where product is automatically bagged and sealed. The bagger reliably prints product information on bags of a shingled bag assembly. The two tape strips on the lead end of the bag assembly are attached to a take-up reel so that rotation of the reel by a drive motor pulls the bag assembly to the workstation. The tape strips are wound on the reel as the bag assembly is pulled through the bagger.
Workstations typically process production runs requiring different size bags for different size products. The bagger described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,837,023 is intended to be used with different size bags. When changing bag assemblies to change bag size the tape strips of the installed bag assembly are cut near or at the take-up reel, the bags on the lead end of the installed bag assembly are stripped off the tape strips and the assembly is removed from the bagger. The strips at the lead end of the removed assembly can easily be wound onto the reel when the assembly is reinstalled in the bagger. A new bag assembly with different sized bags is then installed in the bagger. The unused bags stripped from the removed bag assembly are discarded and wasted.
Conventional bag dispenser take-up reels are rotated by air ratchet drive motors. This type motor rotates the take-up reel through a fixed angle per each ratcheting motion. Each extension of an air cylinder advances the bag assembly a predetermined distance, typically about 0.25 inches. The operator cannot adjust this distance to correct the position of a bag assembly misaligned at the printer or the loading station.
Conventional take-up reels pull each tape strip in unison. After prolonged operation, one tape strip will often lag behind the other as the strips wind onto the reel. Tape strip lagging causes bags on the assembly to become misaligned at the printer or the loading station and may cause jams in the dispenser.
The bags are expensive. It is desirable to reduce operating cost by eliminating bag waste during operation of the bagger and when changing from one bag assembly to another.